The invention relates to a dryer comprising a drying chamber to contain articles to be dried, a process air guide for guiding process air along the articles to pick up humidity from them, a heat sink disposed in the process air guide for precipitating the humidity, the dryer comprising a condensate container to contain the condensate.
A dryer of such type is apparent from each of the patent publications DE 37 38 031 C2, WO 2007/093461 A1, WO 2007/093467 A1, and WO 2007/093468 A1.
According to each of these documents, the condensate collected is applied to clean at least one component of the dryer from lint, in particular a heat sink that is used to extract heat from a flow of process air which is being circulated through the articles to be dried, to precipitate humidity collected from the articles as a condensate. The heat sink in particular is a component of a heat pump, namely an evaporator heat exchanger wherein the heat extracted from the process air is used to evaporate a refrigerant that circulates through the heat pump undergoing cyclic phase changes from liquid to gas and vice versa.
During a drying process, particles like dust or small fibres, hereinafter termed “lint”, may be released from the articles to be dried. Lint will occur in particular upon drying laundry or other textiles, in particular when the articles are tumbled in a rotating drum as usual for laundry. An according dryer will comprise a filter that filters such lint from the process air; in general however, a fraction of the lint will escape the filter and be transported further along the path of the process air. Upon cooling the process air in the heat sink subsequently, condensate will precipitate from the process air with the lint that has escaped the filter. Some of the lint thus caught by the condensate will be precipitated on the heat sink and remain sticking there. The liquid condensate collected at the heat sink and conveyed to a condensate container will also contain a substantial amount of lint dispersed therein. As specified in DE 37 38 031 C2, a cleaning device for cleaning the heat sink is provided. The cleaning device includes a distributor directed towards the heat sink and means to spray the condensate thus collected onto the heat sink for removing the lint sticking to it. To prevent the distributor from clogging by lint dispersed in the condensate, it has nozzles with cross sections that are large enough to allow the dispersed lint to pass without clogging. These large cross sections will cause low limits to pressure and velocity of the condensate pressed through, and impair the cleaning effect of the sprayed condensate.